Staff Picks Blog

I am fascinated by knots. I do knot know if it is the underlying math, the beauty in the geometry or their usefulness. While browsing our collection of knot books I came across Decorative Knot Craft by Kim Sang Lang. One knot in particular jumped out at me, the Dragonfly Knot. My girlfriend, Anne, and I were going to be celebrating our second anniversary and I more often than knot make things for her on special occasions. I thought I would be able to incorporate that knot into another gift.

The book clearly illustrated the numerous steps with color photos. The use of multiple colored ropes in the photos helped a lot in figuring out which of the seemingly hundreds of strands (only two in reality) went where.

The head of the dragonfly called for a lotus knot, which I found difficult but still doable. Once I had it finished I decided the head was all wrong so I consulted The complete book of decorative knots, by Geoffrey Budworth to see if I could come up with something more aesthetically pleasing to me. Sadly, despite the nice illustrations, I fell short when trying to tie the Earth knot (or maybe it was the Saturn knot). I returned to the lotus knot and with a few slight modifications I was quite pleased with my end result.

I hope she was too.